


Deep in the Heart of Texas

by lavendersblues (lonely_lovebird)



Series: The Ranchverse [1]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Bilingual Character(s), But mostly family feels, Case Fic, Dalton Family - Freeform, Dalton Family Ranch, Episode Related, Flashbacks, Gift Fic, Jack and Mac have feelings, M/M, Mama Dalton, Post Lake Como, Pre-Slash, Takes place in the 3 month gap in the pilot episode, This is shippy fair warning, Tombstone References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-30
Updated: 2018-10-30
Packaged: 2019-08-10 21:47:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16462949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonely_lovebird/pseuds/lavendersblues
Summary: Two months after Lake Como Jack receives a concerning text message from his mother and drags Mac off to the family homestead to investigate - gunshot wound or no. When it comes to family, Jack will move heaven and earth to make sure they're safe.And hopefully a little trip to the Lone Star State will help Mac on his road to healing.





	Deep in the Heart of Texas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KatieComma](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KatieComma/gifts).



> Happy Birthday KatieComma! I hope you enjoy your visit to the Dalton Ranch! A million thanks to [thethistlegirl](https://thethistlegirl.tumblr.com/) and [thesmmykinz](http://thesammykinz.tumblr.com) for all your beta work and feedback!
> 
> Warnings: This story deals heavily with themes of PTSD, psychological trauma, kidnapping, and death... A lot of the things you'd get in an episode, nothing graphic and beyond what you would get in a normal episode, but fair warning Jack and Mac have some dark thoughts.

Jack hadn’t meant to conscript Mac into visiting his mother. In fact, he had wanted Mac meeting his mother to be a fun and relaxing visit, something special because of how much Mac meant to him. But his mother, who had sent the world’s most cryptic text, had sent him into a minor panic at the ass-crack of dawn, leaving Jack just enough time to bundle up his wounded partner and tell Patty they were taking off before they hit a flight to the Dallas Love Field Airport.

**Mom  3:59 AM**

_ Cops came by and woke up Jake asking about the neighbors again. Not sure if their music is too loud or if they’re just dealing drugs. _

But Jack had panicked, appearing out of nowhere at Mac’s house at 6:15, having sped through the morning traffic like a bat out of hell, bursting through the front door and shouting at Mac to get the hell dressed, they were going to Texas.

Mac had strangely obliged, grabbing his emergency go-bag and following Jack with little protest. Jack had noticed the subdued air around his partner. It had been a growing cloud hanging around Mac’s head for the last two months. He was still in the sling, and still off work, but Jack thought it was a little more psychosomatic.

Mac had grumbled the entire way through the airport, sliding his sling off for the time it took them to get through security, and sliding it back on with a wince. They made their way to the gate with barely a word between them, Jack too frantic and Mac - well silent was Mac’s state of being anymore these days.

Jack could see the cold seeping into his partner’s eyes with every passing day since they’d lost Nikki. Italy had left Mac in a bad way. Explaining the fake reason for the injury to Bozer had been nearly as difficult as telling Bozer that Nikki had died. Mac had walked around for weeks after he’d been discharged as if he were a ghost.

Jack hadn’t known what to do, so he’d taken a leave of absence, and hung around the house as often as he could without Mac turning him away at the door. It was a new feeling - being turned away. He and Mac had faced so many painful and difficult things together, but this was something Mac was trying to shoulder alone - and it killed Jack. 

But now Mac was letting Jack haul him halfway across the continent because the situation clearly wasn’t as “fine” as his mother made it sound on her emails and phone calls. Jack sat in the airport’s uncomfortable seats, shaking his leg, glancing at his phone’s digital clock nearly every two minutes.

“Jack, it’s going to be fine,” Mac huffed, pressing his good hand to Jack’s knee and stilling its movement. He glanced at Jack who scowled and crossed his arms, leaning further back into the chair.

“These damn neighbors of hers that moved in last year have been nothing but trouble,” Jack groused. “The cops came by while we were in Italy asking if they’d seen anything unusual,” he grumbled. “And then they’ve had lights driving past their house all night long at all hours - I just don’t trust this is something harmless.”

Mac rolled his head on his shoulders and thought for a long moment as the first zone for boarding was called. “I mean, you could be overreacting, but you have good instincts. What I mean is that it’s going to be fine - we’re on our way there, and it’s not like something bad is going to happen while we’re on our flight.”

Jack glowered, if it were possible, even harder. “Knock on wood, don’t you jinx us like that Mac! We’ve got some pretty bad luck when it comes to things like this. I should have gone when she first sent that voicemail, you should’a heard her Mac….”

The voicemail in question had appeared on Jack’s phone as soon as they were stateside, but he’d been too busy with debrief and worrying about Mac to take the time to fly out to Texas. He could have gone once Mac had been discharged but his mother had called to assure him that she had everything handled and it was all a misunderstanding.

The cars at all hours had stopped, and the neighbors had been quiet as a mouse.

Until now.

Mac stood when their boarding zone was called, reaching with his one good arm to grab his go-bag but Jack pushed him away quickly. “Whoa, hold up there hoss, I got this. You just get to hold the tickets.” He handed Mac the two printed tickets and Mac sighed, resigning himself to Jack carrying both bags.

They found their seats and Jack shifted nervously as they settled in, their go-bags stowed comfortably in the overhead compartments, and Mac pressed tightly against the window and Jack’s shoulder.

Jack couldn’t help but let his thoughts drift to Texas, his mother’s house on the twenty acres of ranch land, his grandmother just down the road, and the neighbor across the street just between them. His eyes drifted shut as the plane began to take off, the g-force pushing him into his seat and closer to Mac, shoulders brushing firmly.

In his mind’s eye he could see the green of the trees, the grass, the blue sky in the background like a canvas speckled with fluffy white clouds. The rolling hills of his hometown, the water tower with the painted Longhorn logo, the High School and the sprawling green grass on the football field. He could still recall with perfect clarity the Dairy Queen parking lot where he’d had his first kiss, the Brookshire’s where he’d had his first job, and the river where he’d spent nearly every summer floating in the sun.

He could smell the mesquite trees, hear the cicadas buzzing in the heat and the humidity, and he could feel the sun on the back of his neck while he helped his dad build fences. There was a haze over his memory, something put there by fondness and the warm feelings that came with time, but he knew that when they’d built fence during that hot summer all Jack had done was bitch and moan to his dad about how damn hot it was outside.

But he could hear his dad’s laugh, see his mom’s smile, and feel the contentment that came from his small family gathered around the dinner table on a Sunday afternoon, digging into his mother’s biscuits and gravy brunch after attending the morning service down at Rose Glen First Baptist, and Jack couldn’t help but smile. 

The plane jerked as the wheels hit the tarmac and Jack came to, jumping back and pulling his head from Mac’s shoulder where it had fallen during the nap he hadn’t even realized he had been taking during the flight. Mac only gave him a soft questioning glance at his sudden movement before turning back to the window to look out at the airport view.

Jack hastily wiped his face, feeling self conscious and unnecessarily awkward. 

Disembarking from the plane took what Jack considered to be eons of time, but without checked luggage they sped through the airport to grab an Uber (Jack’s idea) that would take them all the way from Dallas to Rose Glen - a nearly two and a half hour drive.

Their Uber driver had seemed unconcerned with the time it would take to reach their destination as she loaded their go-bags into the trunk and helped Mac into the front seat. Jack liked that the sling was an instant chick-magnet most of the time, but his heart wasn’t going to slow down until he saw that his mother and the ranch were all in one piece.

The driver and Mac made small talk on their drive, Jack stretched out on the backseat resting his eyes and refraining from butting into his best buddy’s business. ( _ “Oh, you work for a think tank? Do you like it?” “Yeah, it’s been a really great learning experience. Are you a college student?” “Yeah, I go to UT Arlington and driving Uber just helps pay the bills. Art supplies are expensive.” _ ) It was cute, but Jack just wasn’t that interested in chatting up the perky Uber driver at the moment. But it was nice to see Mac smiling a little.

They pulled into the county limits and Jack instantly perked up, sitting up straighter and watching through the windshield as he situated himself in the middle seat, leaning forward to get a better view and to listen a little more intently to the conversation. ( _ “Oh, Rose Glen! I’ve been here before, I think we used to play them in football.” “Oh really? Where are you from?” “Cleburne.” “I have no idea where that is.” The Uber driver laughed. _ )

“Take your left up here,” Jack said suddenly, interrupting the flow. The driver jumped, startled, and Mac - while equally startled - just looked at Jack with wide and questioning eyes.

“But the GPS says,” the driver said with confusion, glancing at the phone map she had sitting on a stand in the windshield, but Jack waved her off.

“It’s been nearly fifteen years,” Jack griped, “you think the GPS would know they’d expanded the reservoir for the power plant, but it wants you to take a road that they washed out. So take the left up here, it’ll get you there the back way.”

“Power plant?” Mac questioned as the driver began to follow Jack’s instructions. They drove through a stand alone street of houses, nearly mansions, as if the road they were on belonged in some kind of upper class Beverly Hills suburb. When the road ended, they followed it around to the right, passing a gate that led to the road that had been washed out for the new reservoir.

Jack shrugged. “The state wanted a new nuclear power plant and they wanted to put it in the next county over but they didn’t want to take the risk, so Somervell County said they’d take it and here we are, now one of the richest counties in the state thanks to the tax incentives for taking on the possibility of a nuclear meltdown.”

Mac snorted, turning back to the windshield. Jack knew Mac had more faith in scientists than Jack ever had, and didn’t consider living next to the possible next Chernobyl a problem or a possibility. Jack directed the driver to take a left at the next T in the road, sending them up and away from the wash where water had been directed through to fill the reservoir, and back onto stable flat ground.

“Second house on your right,” Jack said quietly, aware that the GPS had finally rerouted them and was accurately pointing to the house that lay back from the road, hidden behind the massive branches of an oak tree - down a long gravel driveway. Jack could see the dogs running to the gate as the car pulled up.

There was a corgi, a brass haired mutt that looked more like a dingo than a dog, and a beefy white Great Pyrenees that was supposed to be guarding the herds and not greeting guests at the fence. Jack supposed his uncle had failed in training the dog like Jack had said he would.

“We’ll go ahead and walk from here,” Jack said, grinning at the confused driver and Mac who looked at the dogs with hesitation. “I’ll go ahead and get the bags out of the back.”

Jack unloaded their go-bags and waited patiently as the Uber driver pulled out and headed back towards civilization before he turned to the gate and reached through the bars to unlock it and slide it open. The dogs crowded around his legs and he walked gingerly, avoiding the trip hazard that was the corgi.

“Watch your step,” he cautioned Mac as he closed the gate behind the extremely confused genius. The dogs pawed and panted around Mac, hoping for a token of affection or more probably a treat given to them when they finally agreed to  _ ‘Git you damn menaces!’  _ as his mother would say.

“They’re cute,” Mac said offhand as he reached for his go-bag. Jack swatted his hand away and threw both bags over his shoulder with ease. Mac glared and sulked, dropping into step next to Jack as they made their way to the little rock house towards the back of the property.

Jack could see a tractor running behind the house, most likely dropping hay for the cattle he knew were out somewhere in the copse of trees that his dad had never managed to tame or cut down. To his left was the barn and the round-pen - and all the yards and equipment used to keep their cattle and horses, and to his right was the horse pasture. A few of the younger horses trotted to the fence as they walked, interested in the humans who were trudging past them on foot.

A chicken darted out between their legs and was immediately chased with a loud squawk by the three dogs. Jack chuckled at the sight as the chicken hauled ass towards the horse pasture, seeking refuge from the three barking hounds on its tail.

“ **_Jack Wyatt Dalton Junior, you get your ass over here right now!_ ** ”

The yell was enough to startle Mac, who jumped and stared wide eyed at the sight of a short and stocky woman walking purposefully across the grass towards them. Jack felt a chill up his spine at the sight of his mother - fifty-nine years young, with only wisps of grey combed through her long dark curls - storming from the back door towards him. It was a sight straight out of his childhood nightmares, complete with his full name.

Linda Luanne Dalton was a formidable woman even at five foot four. She was dressed head to toe in work clothes, worn out and faded jeans over a pair of boots that Jack knew had been re-soled at least four times already, and one of his dad’s old button up shirts with the sleeves rolled back over a t-shirt with the slogan for the local wildlife preserve.

Jack tried to play it cool, dropping the go-bags and reaching out like he wanted to hug his mother. He laughed, “Mama!” while he tried to simultaneously throw his arms around his favorite family member in the world - but was thwarted by her reaching up quickly and grabbing hold of his earlobe in a vice grip.

“Jack Dalton, I told you to come and visit me and it takes a text message about the neighbors to bring you home? What the hell is wrong with you, boy?!” She hissed, yanking his face down until he was practically level with her glaring brown eyes. Mac shrunk away, awkwardly looking between Jack and his  _ angel _ of a mother.

“Mama, I told you that I was busy with work -,” a tug at his ear had him hissing in pain, “- and that I didn’t have time but I’m here now! Don’t you want to tell your favorite son how much you love and miss him?”

His mother canted her hips, placing her free hand on one side and tilting her head as she looked at Jack with skepticism written clearly across her features. Jack remembered that look from every single time he’d ever tried to lie his way out of a punishment and he felt his stomach sink like a stone. His mother wasn’t having anything to do with it.

“You know that I almost hoped you’d come out when I told you the cops woke up Jake?” Jack looked at her confused. “They woke him up  _ from a nap _ . Guess you can’t read a clock now that you live in California. That boy had been up since four workin’ the cows, you think he was still in bed at six?”

Jack laughed awkwardly, realizing in that moment that his momentary panic had been nothing but the result of an overactive imagination and a little of the anxiety for Mac bleeding over into the rest of his life. He couldn’t help that he was constantly keyed up ever since they got back from Lake Como, he couldn’t rest while Mac was walking around like the walking dead.

“Mama, mama,” Jack stressed, trying to free his ear. His mother obliged, letting him straighten and rub out the ache in his shoulder. “I’m so sorry I haven’t come to see you, I been real busy with work - Mac won’t take a vacation and I can’t let him go do something stupid without me.” He took that moment to pointedly look at Mac who was still watching with wide and nervous eyes.

True to her Southern heritage, Linda Dalton took one look at Mac in his sling and warmed up like butter on a fresh biscuit. 

“Oh my Lord, is that Angus MacGyver?!” Linda practically shrilled, giving Mac a quick once over. “Oh honey, come inside. I cannot believe my son would drag his injured partner all the way across the United States for something like this!” She reached up and waved her hands to pull Mac into an awkward hug before guiding him towards the house. Jack sighed, grabbing the bags and following with wounded steps.

His mother was still gushing over Mac who seemed to Jack in that instant like a deer that was caught between a cliff and a mountain lion.

“Sweetie, I have been wanting to meet you since Jack’s first email about you in Afghanistan! I don’t know why it took my son  _ this long _ to bring you home to see me!” She glanced over her shoulder, and Jack didn’t miss the heavy undertones in his mother’s eyes. He didn’t have time to ponder her hidden meaning because she was putting Mac in a seat at his childhood dining table and grabbing a plate of food and piling it up in front of Mac.

“Oh, uh,” Mac stuttered, glancing between Jack’s mother and Jack. “Thank you very much Mrs. Dalton, but -,” Linda tutted, cutting him off quickly.

“You can call me Linda, sweetie. Or mama. Or Mama Dalton. I won’t lie and say I’m fond of the latter, but it’s better than  _ Mrs. Dalton _ . Mrs. Dalton was my late husband’s stuffy mother, God rest her soul.” Linda made a sour face before moving on and quickly dashing to the cupboards and bringing two cups. Jack was surprised she had even brought one for him with how he was clearly in the dog house.

“Thank you very much, Linda, but I’m really fine,” Mac waved at the plate of biscuits, fried chicken, green beans and okra, that Linda had put together. She was pouring iced tea from a pitcher into his glass and she managed to pour one for Jack without glaring, so Jack thought that she was slowly defrosting.

“Oh, it’s no problem sugar, just eat what you’d like. That’s the leftovers from Jake and the boy’s lunch and Lord knows I won’t be able to finish it before it all goes bad.”

Jack raised his hand slowly. “Mama, could I maybe…?” He trailed off as she turned her icy gaze back to him and lowered his hand back to the table to fiddle with his glass which was slowly being covered with condensation.

“If you want a plate, Jack Junior, you know right where the dishes are. They haven’t moved since the last time you were here,” she sniffed, turning back to the kitchen. “And if I’ve forgiven you by then, we can have Dr. Pepper cake after,” she called over her shoulder.

Mac gaped as Jack’s mother retreated down the hallway towards what Jack knew was the home office, the one that had been his sister’s until she’d moved to college. 

Jack shrugged at Mac’s open mouthed expression and Mac closed his jaw shut with a click before picking up the fork Linda had left and slowly poking at the leftovers. They were still warm, judging by the tiny wafts of steam - that or his mama had warmed it up before she’d decided to come out to the driveway to accost them.

“So your mom is…something else,” Mac mumbled, picking up a forkful of okra and trying it before quickly dropping it out of his mouth and back onto his fork with a horrified expression. “What?  _ What is that? _ ” He stared at the offending vegetable as if it had bitten him.

“Okra,” Jack grumbled, sipping his tea. He reached out and snagged a green bean from Mac’s plate - fresh from the garden he knew his mother was still growing out back. The bean crunched satisfactorily, and was warm and moist from the steamer basket. “Tastes good but slimes up  _ real _ bad when mama cooks it. She never did get the hang of it.”

Mac stared at his plate and scrunched his nose like he was thinking before he half shrugged, and he dug into the chicken with his bare hands. The crunch was loud enough that Jack could hear it from his seat and he smiled as Mac looked delightedly at the lunch. Jack reached over and snagged a biscuit, earning a half-hearted slap from Mac as he pulled the biscuit back to his side of the table.

“She said you could get your own, you know,” Mac grumbled, letting the biscuit thievery win out, his smile indulgent as he watched Jack munch on the buttery, flaky goodness that was his mother’s homemade biscuit.

“Yeah but it always tastes better from your plate,” Jack argued, eyeing Mac’s second piece of chicken. “Besides, you’re not really going to side with my mother on this one, are you?”

Mac shrugged again, wincing as the action jostled his still healing shoulder. “I don’t know, you  _ are _ the one who didn’t visit for five years. I’m inclined to side with her.”

Jack sighed, thinking about the last five years and the look his mother had given him over her shoulder in the yard. It was true that he’d avoided coming home for five years, mainly on the behalf of chasing Mac halfway around the world and back every other week on different missions, and never knowing how to ask Patty for the time off where she could promise she wouldn’t send Mac off to the middle of some god-forsaken country with inadequate backup. 

And it wasn’t that Jack didn’t trust the other DXS security members, it was just that he had first-hand experience in how far south an Op with Mac could go and without someone who knew how Mac thought - and trusted Mac’s judgement - he always worried that someone else would make the wrong call and get both of them killed, and Jack could have been the one to prevent it.

And as for the second thing that kept him from coming home, well…now he wasn’t so sure. His mother’s eyes had looked straight through his soul as if she were reading him like a book and they had clearly seemed to say - “ _ Jack Dalton, why did it take you so long to bring home the boy you’re in love with to meet your mother? _ ” And that,  _ well _ .

That was something Jack wasn’t ready to deal with at all.

If ever.

———

The food Linda had piled on Mac’s plate was honestly too much, but he couldn’t stop eating. The flavors were all a little different than he was used to, and the satisfying textures just made it impossible to stop until he had polished off the last bite. 

Somewhere in the middle of Mac devouring his plate, Jack had left the table to talk to his mother, and Mac tried not to listen to the hushed voices that carried down the hallway from what Mac assumed was Linda’s office. 

As he tried to ignore the snapshots of conversation floating down the hall, Mac tried to turn his attention elsewhere. Out of the window he could see a man who looked a little like Jack throwing bales of hay onto a trailer attached to a…

Was that a golf cart?

The other man climbed into the golf cart and drove off towards the front of the property where Jack and Mac had come in through the gate near where the horses were pastured.

The back and forth whispers seemed like Jack and his mother were arguing, if Jack’s repeated, ‘ _ Don’t say that _ ’s were anything to go by. Mac had seen the text about Linda’s neighbors while he and Jack had waited for the plane, and he had to admit it did seem like Jack was overreacting. Mac had initially assumed the escape to Texas had just been a ruse to get him out of Los Angeles - and he’d gone along with it because he wanted Jack to know that he was fine.

Mac wasn’t anywhere near okay, but he was  _ fine _ .

Really.

But now that he could hear snippets of Linda’s explanation about what had been going on with the neighbors and Jack’s refusal to accept her placations about everything being “peachy”, Mac could start to see Jack’s worry. The cars at all hours of the night and day, the loud music on the weekends that went into all hours of the nights, the cop cars coming onto their property even on nights they didn’t stop and talk to Linda or Jake.

The signs sounded like a drug dealer’s house, at the very least.

Or possibly something much worse.

Mac downed the last of his glass of iced tea with a satisfied sigh. The door opened as he set the glass back down and Jake walked through the back door. The entry through the backdoor was the laundry room, a little narrow and dark, with the washing machine and dryer to the right of the door. Jake kicked off his boots noisily, leaning against the washer, and walked into the kitchen area, eyes searching for the pitcher of iced tea. 

He was thirstily gulping down his glass of tea when he finally glanced to the table and started, choking on his drink and spilling a slosh of the brown liquid down his front, gaping at Mac at the table.

“What the  _ hell _ —,” he coughed, wincing before setting his cup down and grabbing for the towel off the oven handle, dabbing it over the large stain of tea on his shirt. “Who-? Linda didn’t…” He squinted at Mac for a long second, eyes narrowed and suspicious. “Did she?”

Mac didn’t have time to answer as he was saved by the appearance of his partner, who took one look at the situation and burst into laughter. It was nice to hear Jack laugh, Mac hadn’t really heard the sound since Lake Como much.

That might have been Mac’s own fault, however, with as much as he had been shutting Jack out over the last two months.

“Oh, Lord, that’s hilarious!” Jack wheezed. “Sorry Jake, didn’t mean to scare you,” Jack leaned up from where he had been gasping for air through his chuckles. “This here is Mac, my partner.”

Jake gave Mac a critical once over and grinned. “No shit!” He exclaimed, grinning at Jack. “Your EOD Tech from the ‘Stan, right?” 

Jack laughed, a genuine smile stretching across his features as he looked between Mac and Jake, leaning against his mother’s countertop. “Yeah, that’s the one. The crazy genius with no sense of self preservation,” he said, as if it were something he’d explained to his family more than once.

Looking at Jack standing next to Jake, Mac had to admit it was a startling comparison. Jack and Jake could have been brothers, despite the fact that Mac knew Jack only had a younger sister. Jake had the same hard and chiseled build, though he was at least five years younger than Jack, if not closer to six or seven. Jake had a younger and fuller face, less weathered than Jack’s was now at nearly forty-one.

But the two of them side by side looked like a pair of muscle-bound bouncers, with their arms crossed and muscles bulging under their t-shirt sleeves. Jake also had the hint of a farmers tan peeking out under the line of his dirty work shirt, and at the edge of his collar. His face and neck were red and Mac remembered the dark brown Jack had turned in the desert during their tour together in Afghanistan and wondered if it was some sort of Texas trait or if Jack and Jake really were related.

“Oh, sorry,” Jack said quickly, catching sight of Mac’s thinking face. “This is my uncle, Jake Dalton.”

Mac did a double take. He couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of Jack’s mouth. “ _ Uncle _ ?!”

Linda appeared from the end of the hallway and grinned, a twinkle in her eye as she looked between Jack and Jake who were sighing, looking as if they’d had to explain themselves nearly a million times before and were already tired by the idea of explaining again. Thankfully Jack never left Mac hanging long and he rubbed the back of his neck and shrugged.

“Dad had a big family. Dad’s the oldest, Jake’s the youngest,” Jack began by way of explanation. “I was already around by the time Granddad and Mamaw had Jake. It’s…an interesting story to tell strangers when you’re babysitting some pup kid who’s technically your uncle.”

Mac stared. “ _ How _ many kids were in your dad’s family?”

“Nine,” Jake answered helpfully, with a Cheshire smile. “Jack, Charlie, Maggie, Ron and Steven, Barbara, Elizabeth, Mark, and me.”

Jack grinned and ribbed Jake with his elbow. “Little Jacob Henry Dalton, the  _ surprise _ .”

Linda laughed at that, reaching around Mac to take his empty plate. Mac stammered his thanks and she waved him off, dropping the dishes in the sink and giving Jake a quick one armed hug before smacking her son on the arm. “Jake’s been living with his family in the back house since my husband passed away, and they’ve been helping me run the ranch.”

“Oh,” Mac nodded dumbly.

Jack slapped his thighs to break the odd silence that had settled after the mention of Jack Sr., and rubbed his hands together, pushing away from the counter and grinning at his mother. “So this has been fun, but I think I’ll take Mac out to see some of the old stomping grounds, and then we’ll be back for dinner.”

Linda nodded, her eyes still bright but Mac could see the hint of shadow behind her smile. He didn’t dwell on it as he stood, the scrape of his chair loud and grating on the tile floor.  He nodded to Jake who waved, mumbling a “Nice to meet you,” as Mac followed Jack towards the door.

“Don’t be late, Jack Dalton!” Linda called to their retreating backs. “KK still wants to see you before you skip back off to the Golden State. Don’t you disappoint her, now!”

Jack waved a hand with a half-hearted, “Yeah, mama, I know,” before awkwardly ushering Mac around him in the tight space and through the door and back onto the carport. His hand snagged a keyring from the wall before closing the door behind them.

The afternoon air was humid and muggy, and Mac felt like he’d walked back into some South American jungle just from the amount of water he was breathing. He looked around the property, the barn in the distance with the metallic contraptions he assumed were most likely for the horses scattered around, plus a few tractor attachments, a white work truck, and a round pen all dusted with shades of orange in the filtering afternoon light.

Under the carport however were three more vehicles, a relatively clean sedan of some generic make and model, a deep green SUV that was clearly designed to carry as many human beings as physically possible, and a powder blue pickup that Mac was fairly certain had to be at least from the 60’s. It seemed to be well taken care of, and he wondered if it was another of Jack’s dad’s projects like the GTO.

Jack walked to the generic sedan, a tan-creme colored four door vehicle, and reached for the driver’s side door. He glanced at Mac who was still standing and staring at the back door. Jack raised his eyebrows and smirked. “Well? Get in, genius. We’re goin’ for a ride.”

Mac smiled at the thicker accent slipping through Jack’s words as he moved to climb into the car, careful not to jostle his shoulder as he sat heavily against the seat and moved to buckle himself in. Jack climbed in and grinned at him, starting the car with a quiet purr and pulling out and heading down the driveway towards the road.

Mac leaned back and enjoyed the quiet buzz of the engine beneath him and the rocking of the car as Jack took them towards the town, and Mac let out a sigh - eyes fluttering shut. He hadn’t been resting well since coming back from Italy. Every night he would jerk awake to the sound of a gunshot in his mind and the image of Nikki’s body dropping like a stone behind his eyelids.

But here, in the comforting atmosphere of the car, the quiet rumble of the engine cushioning him on all sides, the hum of the air conditioning blowing softly across his face gently pushing at the edges of his hair, and the sounds of Jack humming to the radio, Mac finally felt himself begin to relax.

Mac’s breathing began to even out until they became soft puffs of air from his lips and Jack smiled. He knew the kid was wound up, he’d seen it in the way Mac had carried himself. He clearly hadn’t been sleeping well - the bags under his eyes were a dead giveaway. And Jack remembered times at the beginning of their friendship when Mac had woken from nightmares in the dead of night, and slept fitfully in the Humvee trying to make up for his lack of sleep.

The Texas countryside flew past them as Jack steered his mom’s car towards the town. They hadn’t really been able to drive through it coming from the airport, and he was looking forward to seeing what had become of Rose Glen and what had still stayed the same.

The neighbors weighed on his mind as he drove, the rolling hills a silent backdrop to his musing. His mother had said they weren’t a problem, but they had apparently been hosting huge blowout parties nearly every weekend, with bass that shook the walls and scared the horses. The cars all hours of the night had seemed to stop, but Mom had said that sometimes she still heard engines.

Jack didn’t know much about the neighbors, aside from the fact that they were the property situated firmly between his mother and his grandmother, but on the other side of the road. It wasn’t much of a worry that strangers might be coming onto either property but the fact that they lived across the street and owned the large chunk of land there meant that there was more space for illicit activities to occur without being noticed.

He’d tracked enough drug runners and cartels in his time with the Agency to know the signs before others caught on.

At the stoplight, he slowed, taking a look at the main road of two that ran through town. The high school was to the right, at the very end of the road before it went out into more ranch land and out towards the wildlife preserve. To his left was the string of small strip malls and a few hotels, catering more towards the truck drivers that came through town on their way to other parts of the state.

Jack decided to go straight through the light - towards downtown - and cruise around until Mac woke up. The poor kid was out for the count. Jack’s heart swelled a little as he caught sight of Mac’s peaceful face, the pieces of his hair draped across his forehead, caressing his skin gently - like a lover. He yearned to reach across the space between them and push the locks back, just to watch them fall back to their place like he knew they would. He wanted to feel, to touch. Just to know that Mac was safe, Mac was alive, and Mac was here with him.

Having to haul Mac’s half-drowned and bleeding body out of Lake Como and to the nearest hospital hadn’t been Jack’s favorite day. He had resolved to never let someone get the drop on him like that again, especially not when it meant that Mac would pay for his careless mistake.

The trees grew tall around them as they descended down a hill, the greenery more wild and overgrown, as they continued a descent down into the heart of historical Rose Glen. Jack drove past the tall and impressive county courthouse, smiling at the square and the quaint style of buildings that surrounded all four sides. He knew that down the hill to his left as he drove, the Brazos River wound its way through the land softly. He passed the Inn on the Brazos and took the turn back up the sloping countryside to drive the back-way past the schools to try and circle back to the light and go again.

He was taking the corner when Mac stirred, groaning and shifting in his seat. “What the hell? What’s that smell?” He glanced out the windows and squinted. Jack sniffed and laughed, the smell familiar and hardly noticeable for someone who had grown up with it.

“Cattle feed yards,” he grinned. “And this isn’t even on a bad day.”

Mac groaned again, sitting up straighter in his seat and rubbing at his eyes with his fist. Jack tried to push down the fond feeling that tried to choke him as he watched Mac in his peripherals.

He just loved Mac  _ so damn much _ .

“So, this is where you grew up, huh,” Mac said, breaking Jack’s heart wrenching train of thought that had spiraled from  _ I love him _ down to somewhere around the edges of  _ I don’t deserve him _ .

“Yeah,” Jack drawled. “It ain’t much, but it’s grown a lot since I was a kid in school.” He gestured to the buildings they were passing. “Those weren’t here.”

“Huh.” Mac observed the passing Rose Glen School District buildings with glazed eyes. His brain was clearly whirring and clicking away at something, given his distracted expression and the fact that he had missed a clear chance to take a dig at Jack’s age.

They were passing the high school on Stadium Drive, the street that connected all the school campuses, when Mac finally spoke, breaking the comfortable silence.

“So what’s with your mom’s neighbors?”

Ah, Jack mused. Back to the original problem that continued to gnaw at his insides. He could put his feelings for his partner back into the closet for the time being - no pun intended.

“Well, she says there’s no problem,” Jack started, watching the impressive football stadium pass. It was also new. “But from the sounds of it, I’m putting money on drug dealers at the least, cartel at the worst.”

Mac hummed in response, clearly digesting the information as his hands reached blindly for a paperclip before realizing he didn’t have any with him. His face looked stricken but Jack simply reached into his own pocket and passed a wad of paperclips to Mac with a self-satisfied smile. Mac said nothing, taking the paperclips gently.

He smiled softly at Jack, and Jack melted.

“Snagged you some out of the back office,” he rasped out, trying to sound less wrecked than he felt. “Knew you didn’t have any with you.”

“Thanks Jack.”

Jack cleared his throat, turning back onto the main road and deciding to drive up to the other end of town and back. “So, neighbors. Mom mentioned that KK and Kaitlyn had seen people out on the road at weird times of the night when they were letting out the dogs,” Jack continued, trying to relay everything his mother had told him into concise information. “They live on the property next door and KK’s house is closer to the road. The cars used to come in and out at all times of day - until they were reported by Jake and the cops came by. But Kaitlyn swears up and down that the cars keep coming, they just keep their lights off.”

“What about the cops?” Mac asked, absorbing the information as his fingers deftly twisted and shaped the paperclip between them. “Do they have any solid evidence or suspicions against the neighbors?”

Jack shrugged. “They were unhelpful when I called the first time around, but the fact that they came by again suggests to me that there  _ is _ something going on, but they don’t have enough evidence to make a move.”

Mac huffed a laugh under his breath. “Sounds like local police alright.” He finished his paperclip and set it on his knee and Jack saw a five pointed Texas star.

“They’re good guys, but since they clearly have no solid evidence, and it’s been a while since Jake reported them, my best bet is whatever this is? This is something they’re not used to dealing with,” Jack finished. “Which is why I’m leaning towards either drug runners for a cartel, an actual cartel, or something much worse that we haven’t considered yet.”

Mac arched an eyebrow as he started in on his second paper clip, tilting his head. “Yeah, you could be right.” He looked out the window as Jack pulled into the gas station at the end of the road. Jack hated to think he could be right, given the darker imaginings of his mind, and he hoped to hell he was wrong.

They were silent for several long moments as Jack turned the car back around to head out once more.

“So I’m assuming that means you want to check it out, right?” Mac’s voice was laced with hints of excitement and that made Jack’s heart happy. Not only was Mac offering to help him make sure his family was safe, but he was finally sounding interested in doing something other than locking himself in his house, or maybe sitting on the couch to watch movies with Jack. This was the Mac that Jack had been missing.

“Oh definitely,” he replied, grinning. “But after dinner. KK’ll have my hide if we skip out - and she might tan yours too while she’s at it.”

“Right, I meant to ask,” Mac said, turning to Jack. His fingers had long since stopped their fidgeting and a half completed creation rested next to the Texas star. “Who are KK and Kaitlyn?”

“KK is my mother’s mother, who will shoot you if you call her Grandma. She lets the great-grandkids call her Meemaw, but we all grew up calling her KK. Don’t ask me where it came from, or what it means, but the running joke in the family is it means Killer Katherine,” Jack explained. “She single-handedly raised four kids after losing her husband in Korea, and she’s a ‘do no harm, take no shit’ kind of woman.”

“Killer Katherine?” Mac arched an eyebrow.

“I still don’t know the whole story on that one either,” Jack laughed. “Her name is Naon Katherine Hemstreet. And Kaitlyn is my cousin on mom’s side. Her oldest brother’s daughter.”

Mac nodded sagely, and Jack could practically see him drawing a family tree in his mind and filling it in with what he now knew about Jack’s extended family. Jack knew Mac didn’t have a big family - an only child of a dad who ran away and a mom who passed away, and cousins he wasn’t particularly close to. After losing his grandfather, he’d only had Bozer and Jack. But Jack had been blessed with an overabundance of family - they were practically coming out his ears.

It would be nice to share them with Mac.

“So dinner is going to be…?” Mac trailed off in a half question.

“On the porch, probably,” Jack mused, taking the turn back towards the house. “Cause it’ll be you and me, Mama, Jake, Jake’s wife Michelle, their four  _ hellion _ children who I doubt have gotten any better in the last five years, KK, Kaitlyn, and Cooper, her three year old son.”

“Twelve people, wow,” Mac was stunned. “I don’t think I’ve ever been at a dinner that had more than five except for eating in the mess hall on base.”

“It’s kinda like eating in the mess hall, that’s for sure,” Jack chuckled. He remembered the Dalton Family Reunion he’d organized after he’d signed up for his first tour. He’d joined the Army after dropping out of college. He’d always wanted to join the Army, but he’d been too young and still in school when the Gulf War rolled around. But then 9/11 happened and he’d immediately signed up for a two year tour in Iraq.

The entire Dalton family in one place meant they’d rented out the Rose Glen Event Center and set up huge round tables with blue vinyl tablecloths and those centerpieces one of his cousins had made from a Better Home and Garden magazine. At the time, Mamaw had still been alive, and so had his dad, and the party had been one big “How have you been?”

Jack had even gone out of his way to get the local barbecue joint to cater. He’d called in a favor with Eric Hammond, one of the guys he’d played football with, who had taken over the business from his uncle.

And then, when the plates were cleared away and everyone had been stuffed full of their choice of pecan pie, sweet potato pie, and peach cobbler, and as much ice-cream as they could eat from the machine Hammond had brought specifically, the family stories started.

First it was Aunt Maggie telling old family stories. Jake had just started dating the woman who would eventually be his wife and Maggie also took great pleasure in tormenting her little brother by teasing stories about how Mamaw and Granddad had been married with a baby on the way by his age.

“Stuff it, Maggie!” Jake had shouted from his table to a chorus of laughter.

Then Ron and Steven got up and gave a highlight reel of the last few years since the family had been together - just in case anyone had missed an important event or hadn’t been able to make it. There were pictures from Jack’s Basic Training graduation that he ducked his head for, and pictures from Jake’s high school football championship game. There were nieces and nephews, dance recitals and soccer games.

It was heartwarming.

And then it was Jack’s turn.

Jack’s hair had already started to grow from his high and tight and he knew he’d have to get a trim before he shipped out. He nervously ran a hand over the prickly fuzz as he walked to the small stage that had been set up. It was more like a dais, probably only a foot off the ground, but as Jack stood on it seeing the faces of everyone he loved, he felt like he was ten feet in the air.

He didn’t know how to tell them that for the next two years, every day meant a chance that he might die.

Jack had never heard any soldier tell their family they were deploying. He didn’t have a frame of reference. Granddad was already retired by the time Jack came around. And Pop hadn’t been on active duty. Because it never went the way the movies made it seem. Fighting for your country also meant you had a high chance of dying for your country.

Jack was okay with that. He just didn’t know how to say it out loud.

Of course, like every other thing Jack tried, everything went sideways pretty fast. First, he dropped the microphone, and then he got sidetracked talking about the Cowboys. His mother had given him a withering glare and he quickly reigned in his train of thought. Everything was in order. He knew what he was doing and why he was doing it.

“So y’all all know I made Corporal recently…” A chorus of cheers from his uncles and a few of his male cousins echoed through the arena. The entire concrete structure reverberated sound like they had been dropped in a well. “And that we’re going to war.”

The sudden silence was deafening. Everyone knew what he meant. No one had to ask twice. The adults in the room had listened to the President live on television. The teens and older kids didn’t understand but they remembered watching the news. And the younger kids fell quiet just from the eerie and somber atmosphere that began to settle on a room full of nearly sixty people.

Jack swallowed the lump in his throat and pressed forward. The only person who knew what he was about to say was his mother. He knew that if she found out at this family reunion, he’d never make it to Iraq alive. And she had cried as he’d handed over his living will, but there was no one else on this planet that he trusted like his mother.

“I’m deploying to Iraq in two weeks,” Jack rasped out, the microphone indiscriminately catching every hiccup in his voice. “I’ll be gone for two years, at the least. I can’t say for sure if I’ll make it home in one piece, or if I’ll come home in a pine box,” a shiver went up his spine, “but I wanted to bring y’all together to tell you why I’m doing this.”

His mother was crying.

“I believe in this country and its people, and more than that I believe in the people that died that didn’t belong in this fight that got picked with us. Everyone should have the right to be free, and live in a world without fear.”

Jack could see the somber faces of his veteran uncles and his father, whose face was blank and eyes were rimmed with tears. He pressed forward. “I don’t rightly know if this war is right or good, but I know that I don’t want to watch something like this happen again on my television when I could have stood up and done my part to stop it.”

That was all that Jack really had to say. No one clapped or cheered or made any motion as he finished and he felt the seriousness of the announcement finally sink in. He had hoped to avoid crying in front of his family, but it was clearly impossible. The tears spilled over his cheeks and he tried to keep his voice steady. His mother was crying even harder, but she did nothing to stem the flow of tears.

“I love y’all…” Jack choked out. “So much. Really, I do. And I want you to remember that.” His sister was crying now too and it sent another wave of tears down his own cheeks. His father was still stone, watching him with a piercing stare.

“And no matter what happens in the next two years, I want you to know that I want to keep you safe. Junior loves y’all.”

That seemed to be the moment that his father broke, and Jack finally broke with him. He held the microphone away from his face as he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, blocking the sight of his rough and rugged father weeping like a child. His own sobs shook his shoulders and the Dalton family watched on as two of the bravest men among them cried.

“…ack? Hey Jack?”

Jack jerked, startled, as he realized he had lost himself in his memories and driven home on autopilot. It wasn’t always a safe thing, but Jack had managed to navigate them back to the Ranch with little difficulty. They were sitting outside of the gate, the dogs barking at it as if willing it to open so they could run out to sniff and inspect the car.

“Huh?” Jack asked smartly, looking at Mac who was looking at him with concern.

_ His eyes should be illegal _ , Jack thought deliriously. Then he fully came to himself and realized they were sitting in front of the gate. To his mother’s house. With his partner who had just watched his girlfriend die in Italy. And had been shot in the shoulder and almost died himself.

Right.

Jack knew there was a reason he hadn’t come home in five years, and he thought that the emotions home brought out in him might have been part of the reason. He tried to stuff memory lane back into its place as he climbed from the drivers side door, waving off Mac’s offer to get the gate, and his protests over Jack citing Mac’s sling as the reason he should let Jack handle it.

The dogs ran out to surround the car as he opened the gate and he fought his way back to the driver’s side door around wagging tails of fluff and trip hazards. He closed the gate after having pulled the car forward and making sure the dogs were back in the confines of the property once more.

One of the horses, Peach, his mother’s pink roan, had her head stretched over the top of the pipe fence out towards the driveway and she was sniffing the air in Jack’s direction. He gave her nose a quick rub before climbing back in to take Mac back to the house. Mac continued to watch him and Jack didn’t know what excuse he could offer Mac that wouldn’t rouse his suspicions more.

Jake had set up the table under the carport awning, the vehicles moved off to the side. Jack parked behind Jake’s white truck and killed the engine. Michelle was setting the table and four boys of varying sizes but practically identical features were sprinting around the table with water guns that they continued to spray at each other, occasionally catching their mother in the crossfire.

“Manuel Mateo Dalton! If you hit me with that water one more time,  _ mijo _ , I’m going to take your gun and turn it into a watering can for the garden!” Michelle snapped as Jack sauntered up, Mac cautiously following behind. The tallest of the four boys looked sheepish for only a moment before one of his brothers got him square in the back with a stream of water and he was off like a rocket with a battle cry, spraying indiscriminately - hitting brothers, dogs, and then Mac.

Michelle lit up like a firecracker. Her hand snatched out and she grabbed Manuel by the wrist, pulling him to her side and shooting off the world’s fastest chastisement in Spanish that not even Jack’s experience in South America had trained him to follow. “ _ ¿Qué te dije? ¿Qué dije acerca de usar tus juguetes al lado de la casa? ¡Mira lo que has hecho! Tienes que disculparte con el señor ahora, hijo mio. _ ”

She marched him up to Mac who was looking slightly confused and damp, but no worse for wear, but Jack knew that an angry Michelle was a force to be reckoned with. Her three other boys had all come to a halt in terror as their older brother was scolded by their harried mother.

“Sorry,” Manuel scuffed his Spider-Man shoe on the concrete as he looked away. “I didn’t mean to spray you with my water-gun.”

Mac rubbed the back of his neck before crossing his arms defensively, his good arm gripping tightly to the outside of his sling. “Thank you for your apology,” he said awkwardly. “I’ll dry pretty quick in the heat, but you should be more careful and listen to your mom.”

Manuel nodded, still looking at his feet. It was enough for Michelle, however, and she released him and gave him a stern look and a swat on the behind. “ _ Ve, no lastimes a tus hermanos. _ ”

Then she looked up at Jack and gave him a wide smile. “Jack! It’s so good to see you!” She held her arms open and Jack obliged her with a hug. When she released him she immediately turned to Mac and paused upon seeing his sling. “Well, I’d offer to hug you but I don’t want to hurt you…”

Mac grinned and shifted his arm slightly opening up for a hug anyway. “That’s okay, hugs are great.” Michelle responded quickly, wrapping Mac in a good old fashioned Texas bear hug, squeezing him and only pulling away when she was certain he could feel how much love and appreciation she had for him. Jack was fairly certain Jake had already told his wife that Jack had brought home “ _ the actual _ MacGyver”.

Mac had no idea how famous he was in the Dalton family. If there was one thing Jack hoped  _ didn’t _ come out in this dinner, it was how much he’d talked about his favorite EOD nerd during their time in the Sandbox, and just how shocked his family was when he told them he wasn’t coming home - he was moving to California to work at a company with “Mac”.

“Oh so he’s Mac now?” Kaitlyn had teased over the Skype call. “I remember when he used to be ‘Carl’s Jr.’”

His family had heard all the stories about the “slowest EOD Tech”, who slowly became the “greatest EOD Tech”, until one day he was “my EOD Tech”. They’d gone through great lengths to never let Jack forget that he’d abandoned his family and friends to follow some punk kid to one of the few places Jack had sworn he’d never go.

It was generally all in good fun, but there were moments, like now, that Jack worried his family knew too much. He didn’t want to have that conversation with them, he was happy with the way things were, but his mother had practically accosted him in the hallway earlier that afternoon with questions about why he hadn’t bothered to tell her he was interested in men and why he’d never brought home his boyfriend.

Well, she hadn’t said it like that  _ exactly _ , but his mind knew that the things she had been digging for revolved around Mac, Jack’s unrequited feelings, and the fact that Jack wore his heart on his sleeve. It was apparent to Jack that everyone could see his feelings, except for apparently dumb geniuses with funny hamburger names.

“We’re so happy you’re here!” Michelle was saying, ushering Mac to a chair at the table covered in a stretch of plastic tablecloth. It was a table Jack and Mark had built for times like now, when there were too many people to fit at Mama’s kitchen table. There were places for four people down each of the long sides, and two at each end. Somehow Michelle managed to wrangle him and Mac into the two chairs at the end of the table.

“It’s so nice to finally meet you all,” Mac responded with a smile. “Now I get to put faces to some names.”

“Oh so Jack did talk about us?” Michelle looked at Jack with cool amusement. “That’s strange, for a while I thought the only person he was capable of talking about was you.”

Mac flushed at her comment, pointedly avoiding Jack’s eyes. “Ah, yes, well we did have a rocky start and I’m sure he had a lot to say.” Jack felt his heart lurch and he reacted immediately and instinctually, leaning closer to Mac to nudge him shoulder to shoulder.

“Yeah, couldn’t stop talkin’ about the smartest EOD Tech that saved my life and made the Sandbox a little less like hell.”

Mac gave him a small smile and Jack felt like Mac was starting to understand that he really did respect and love the genius. It was hard for Mac to believe he had value, what with a load of emotional baggage related to abandonment issues that stretched a mile long. It wasn’t a surprise to Jack that the one thing had had stuck out to Mac more than the years they’d worked as a team was the idea that Jack could leave at any time.

Jack knew he’d just have to keep sticking it out to prove the kid’s theory that “Everyone leaves eventually” wasn’t even remotely true.

“No really, Jack had so many great stories to tell about what you did together in Afghanistan! And he says you’ve been working together at the Think Tank and it sounds like you have a lot of fun at your job,” Michelle protested. “It almost makes me want to join a Think Tank!”

Mac and Jack exchanged secret grins. “Yeah it’s pretty great.”

Before Michelle could spill more of Jack’s deepest and darkest secrets, the door to the house slammed open and the sounds of bickering floated out as a trail of three women and a toddler came pouring out onto the carport. Michelle winced, and whispered under her breath, “ _ Ay ¡Por favor! _ ”

“I don’t need no damn alarm system for the fence! I’ve got the damn alarm on the house, the trailer, and the truck! Don’t try and tell me I need to spend more money when —,” the oldest woman was griping to the attempted protests of Linda Dalton. Behind them both was a woman about Jake’s age with a toddler attached to her hip, and the toddler was making loud babbling noises as if he were trying to mimic the woman’s argumentative tone. His mother kept trying to shush him, patting her hand over his open mouth, but that only succeeded in rhythmically warping the sound, adding to the chaos.

“Mama just until this whole thing with the neighbors blows over!” Linda pleaded. “If not for you, do it for Cooper!” She gestured to the toddler who was starting to sound more like a party noisemaker than a baby.

“Linda Luanne don’t you start with me,” KK waved a finger at her daughter. “I’m here to see my grandbaby and his partner, eat some of Jake’s brisket and Michelle’s  _ elotes _ , and then I’m going home to watch  _ Cheers _ .”

KK turned on her heel and looked directly at Jack who immediately stood and opened his arms for his wonderful grandmother who took three steps forward, reached up, and gave him a solid whack upside the back of his head. Jack yelped, stumbling backwards and falling into his chair and being braced up by Mac as he went reeling.

“KK!” He shouted, tone wounded. “What was that for?!”

“What kind of grandson don’t even come to visit his family after coming back from his last tour?!” KK responded in kind.

Mac stared openly at the woman who couldn’t have been older than her mid to late seventies that was towering over Jack and putting the fear of God into a man Mac thought couldn’t be frightened except by possibly things like the Loch Ness Monster.

“Well, KK,” Jack had on his placating voice, the kind he used when he had to tell a lie to smooth things over with literally anyone. “You see, Mac ’n I have just been so busy with DXS that I just haven’t had time! We went straight from the Army into working for DXS and I didn’t even have time to take a layover in Dallas!”

“ _ Bullshit _ !” KK snapped, glowering at her grandson. “You were never able to beat me at cards and you certainly can’t pull the wool over my eyes on this one, Junior, so you best stop trying now.”

Jack swallowed hard and Mac had to wonder how many of his CIA lies had his family been able to see right through? Mac had worked with Jack for the better part of five years now and he still couldn’t quite figure out where Jack had a tell. As far as Mac could see, the CIA had trained his tells out of him, but watching someone grow up always gave people a better perspective on their lying face.

“I’m sorry KK,” Jack immediately sobered up. “I did want to come back and see you. I just haven’t had time.”

“Well you’d better start  _ making _ time, Jack Dalton. I’m not gonna be around much longer and if you don’t come and see me again before I go, Heaven help me I will find a way to get the Good Lord to let me annoy you until Kingdom Come.”

“KK you’re not dying,” the third woman who Mac figured must have been Kaitlyn sighed. “You’re healthy as a horse, according to your doctor, and you’re only 76. Jack has been off saving the world with fancy robots or something and all you can do is complain that he hasn’t been around enough.”

KK huffed before taking the seat at the other end of the table, directly across from Mac. “And it takes him five years to bring home the boy responsible for bringing light back into my grandbaby’s life? I ought to smack him another one for that, while I’m at it,” KK grumbled and Mac felt a swoop in his stomach.

He couldn’t believe the things Jack’s family were saying. It was becoming readily apparent that Mac was a household name to the Daltons. Mac had never really been special to someone the way that the Daltons seemed to hold him as a special person in their life by virtue of his relationship with Jack. Even Bozer’s family had been politely distant. His mother had been kind and welcoming but Mac had never met anyone who had been so instantly prepared to adopt him on sight.

To the Daltons who had never even met him, Mac was already family.

Jake slid into the seat next to Mac on the corner, plopping the smallest of his sons next to him. Michelle wrangled the other three boys onto the bench on the other side with her. Linda sat next to Jake, barricading in the happy boy who looked to be no older than five, and Kaitlyn set her son on the corner, next to her from where she sat with KK.

The table was laid with platters of food, that had been brought out by Linda and Kaitlyn as KK had chastised her wayward grandson, and Jake had brought a platter of the largest hunk of meat Mac had ever seen in his life. It was bigger than most of his Thanksgiving turkeys growing up. It smelled heavily of spices and wood smoke and despite the enormous lunch Mac had eaten earlier, his stomach growled and his mouth began to water.

“Alright,” Linda said with a satisfied smile. “Shall we say Grace?”

Mac caught Jack shifting uncomfortably in his seat from the corner of his eye. Jack was clearly avoiding eye contact with everyone at the table. There was a story there, Mac was certain, but he didn’t have time to try and puzzle it out as Jake’s second oldest raised his hand excitedly, nearly pulling himself into the air with the force of his movement.

“Yes, Isaias, you want to say Grace?” Linda smiled at her nephew. Isaias nodded enthusiastically, beaming.

Everyone at the table apart from Jack and Mac moved to join hands. Mac glanced at Jack awkwardly who shrugged, offering the hand that was resting between them. Mac slid his own against Jack’s palm and tried not to think too hard about how nice it felt to hold his partners hand.

Jack took hold of Michelle’s hand with a smirk and a squeeze and she glared at him, squeezing back. Mac smiled as Jack winced at the vice-like grip of his tiny Tía. (That was something Mac was never going to get over, Jake and Michelle being Jack’s uncle and aunt.) Mac obligingly connected hands with Jake and waited as Isaias took a deep breath.

“ _ Bendícenos Seńor, y bendice estos sus bondad vamos a tomar por Cristo, nuestro, Señor. Amén. _ ”

The table chorused an amen, once again with the exception of Mac and Jack, who awkwardly unlinked their hands and reached for the food as the conversation started, creating a pleasant buzz and atmosphere. KK watched as the hands between them slid apart, her eyes keen, and Mac had to wonder why her gaze sent his heart racing with panic.

Jack and Michelle started to teasingly bicker with each other and Mac turned his attention to digging into the barbecue and sides. The meat was juicy and tender, and tasted like something Mac assumed could have come straight from a restaurant kitchen. There was cornbread, roasted corn on the cob slathered in butter, some with a drizzle of a red spice over the top, more green beans, a green salad, a fruit salad, biscuits (because cornbread clearly wasn’t enough), and coleslaw.

Mac was fairly certain that eating at Jack’s house might actually make his stomach explode.

As Mac enjoyed eating and listening to the conversation around him, he thought about his own family. His thoughts suddenly began to drift from his past towards the future he’d thought about once but never hoped for. He’d thought once, while he was with Nikki, that this might have been part of his future. Nikki hadn’t wanted a large family though, her own experiences with her siblings a driving force in her desire to only have one or two kids  _ maybe _ . 

His train of thought was interrupted from spiraling towards Lake Como as Jake leaned conspiratorially over the edge of the table towards Mac.

“He’s a lot like his dad, y’know,” Jake said in a low tone, his eyes darting to Jack who was teasing with Isaias as Michelle laughed. “Dad died when I was six, and my brother - Jack Sr. - was really the driving father figure I had growing up. He was the oldest and while the other boys were good brothers, Jack was around more. 

“He and Linda let me move in with them in High School when Mom wanted to enjoy her retirement years, and they’re more like parents to me sometimes than Dad and Mom ever really were.” Jake smiled fondly at the memory, picking at his cornbread absentmindedly. “I really grew up more with Jack Jr than I did my own siblings.”

Mac smiled. “I’m sure that was an adventure.” He watched Jack make a face at Isaias who burst into giggles. 

“Jack was fun to be around. He was a good influence, and he always smiled,” Jake agreed, but his expression and tone grew serious. “But after joining Delta and the CIA, Jack didn’t smile so much anymore. Sure, he had moments, but I started seeing the light leave his eyes. His dad did too.”

Mac wasn’t sure what to say in response to that, so he kept his mouth shut and waited as Jake seemed to look for the words he wanted to say. Mac remembered Jack from the first day they’d met in the Sandbox with nearly perfect clarity. You don’t tend to forget a guy who shouts, “Hey, what the hell man? Get away from that!” before punching you across the mouth.

Jack had been ready to fight at every turn - and not just with Mac. He’d gotten along with nearly everyone but there was always something tense and coiled under Jack’s skin that had been waiting. If anyone had so much as looked at him wrong, Jack would get defensive and confrontational. It hadn’t been hard for Mac to spot the PTSD in his overwatch.

“But then,” Jake was saying, “he Skyped home one day and he was  _ smiling _ . He was also there to tell us he’d signed up for another tour, but despite all of us being heartbroken he wasn’t coming home, he was smiling.”

Mac’s chest hurt as his head whipped around lightning fast at Jake’s words to look at Jack who was still laughing and joking with the rowdy and excited boys on the bench. Jack’s smile was one of the things he had clung to every time a mission had gone wrong, or a day had been bad. It was the one thing Mac knew was consistent and genuine and Jack always gave them to Mac freely and without price.

Jack’s smiles and his laugh had kept Mac from losing himself over the last two months after losing Nikki. No matter how many times Mac had shut him out, Jack had never stopped smiling just for him.

Mac looked sheepishly back to Jake who’s eyes held a glint of mischief of knowing a secret no one else did. “So I wanted to say thanks, Mac. For bringing our boy home, but more importantly, for giving him back his smile.”

Mac’s throat was tight and his smile wavered but he managed to get out a weak and strangled, “Yeah.” Jake patted his arm sympathetically before turning back to his youngest son who was gently tugging at his shirt to get his attention.

Mac looked around the table and wondered briefly if this was what people were meant to feel on holidays like Thanksgiving, getting together with a group of people that loved each other, even on their bad days, so much so that they would do anything for them. This was family.

“So, Jack-o-Lantern,” Linda’s voice piped up over the murmur of conversation, looking at her son with a smile. Mac grinned in surprise at the nickname. Jack perked his ears up and looked at his mother and something in his shoulders relaxed at seeing that he was clearly forgiven for not making it home in five years. “You haven’t been home in a while, but you haven’t really told us what you’ve been doing. How’s life? How’s the job?”

“Oh!” Jack leaned back from where he had apparently been trying to recreate the chopstick fight from Kung Fu Panda with Isaias using the sticks pulled from the  _ elotes _ . “Uh…” He glanced nervously at Mac. “You know, working at the Think Tank. Keeping Mac from blowing himself up with his crazy inventions. For a kid so skilled in diffusing bombs, he’s sure good at accidentally making them.” 

It was close enough to the truth. Sure, Mac made crazy inventions and nearly got blown up, but most of the time it was because he was purposefully setting out to blow up something anyway.

“What can I say?” Mac joked at Linda’s look of surprise. “I really liked Chemistry class.”  _ If only they knew about the football field incident _ , Mac thought to himself with a smile.  _ And that was  _ before _ I became a trained EOD Technician. _

“You finally get yourself a girlfriend, Junior?” KK asked with a sour tone of voice. The way Jack visibly flinched, Mac assumed there was a backstory to KK’s question.

“Not yet, KK,” Jack admitted. “Been a little busy and the girls in California aren’t like the girls from Texas. I don’t get a lot of second dates.”

KK harrumphed, crossing her arms. “Well that’s what you get for moving away. You know that Megan Skinner is still single, don’t you? You should talk to her before you leave town.”

“Me-Megan Skinner?!” Jack yelped. “KK, that woman is  _ insane _ ! There’s a very good reason she’s still single and it ain’t cause she’s turning her nose up at the offers!”

“Who’s Megan Skinner?” Mac asked with a devilish smile. He loved getting more material to tease Jack with when Jack was getting a little too full of himself.

Linda burst into laughter at the question, a series of hiccuped giggles at the stricken look on her son’s face. “Oh my  _ Lord _ , Crackerjack, you don’t mean to tell me you haven’t told Mac here  _ all  _ about your  _ torrid love life _ in Rose Glen?”

Mac let out a laugh, looking at Jack’s furiously blushing face. “Mama I told you not to call it that! Look,” Jack huffed exasperatedly, “I took Megan Skinner to my junior prom. We dated. We had some not-so-great ‘experiences’. We broke up. She asked me to senior prom -  _ to which I said no _ \- and then she proceeded to try and stalk me out of taking Leah Reynolds.

“And then the last time I saw her she tried to ask me to marry her right before I shipped off to Iraq. So  _ no _ , I wouldn’t call it a torrid love life. And I heard Megan Skinner married and divorced Ralph Thompson  _ in the same year _ . The woman has issues.”

Mac was in stitches by the time Jack finished his tirade, his tone and expressions enough to set Mac off until he was laughing so hard there were tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. Linda and Michelle were laughing nearly as hard, and Jake looked faintly bemused. The children at the table all just looked lost.

With his eyes shut with the force of his laugh, Mac missed the soft, satisfied smile Jack wore as he watched Mac gasping for air and clutching his sides.

KK seemed pleased with Jack’s response, but not because of what he’d said. Jack watched his grandmother’s keen observing eyes watching Mac laughing at the table’s edge and he felt a sneaking suspicion that she  _ knew _ .

Jack was happy to watch the rest of the evening progress in similar fashion. After nearly passing out from laughter, Mac had finally loosened up. Jake offered to get them both beers but they simultaneously turned him down, both knowing they were about to sneak off to investigate the neighbors after dinner. But Mac seemed to be feeling good. He ditched his sling sometime around his second slice of Mama’s famous Dr. Pepper cake and stretched his arm.

Jack could practically hear Mac’s muscles creaking with disuse. But Mac didn’t seem to be in pain like he had that morning when he’d loaded Mac into the car and onto a plane. He’d even started playing with the copper colored mutt, Dingo, under the table, messing with the rope that was plopped in his lap and playing tug of war. He smiled absentmindedly and scratched behind the coppery colored ears and Jack felt his heart grow light.

“What about you Mac?” Linda suddenly turned the conversation around after they had tromped down Jack’s memory lane enough times that Jack was ready for a new topic. “Do you have a girl waiting for you in California?”

Jack froze like a deer in the headlights, but to his surprise Mac only sighed. “No, um,” he twirled one of the paperclips from his pocket in his hand, fingers seemingly calculating what shape to make next, “My girlfriend was killed in a car accident on a business trip to Italy, right around the time I had my accident.”

Linda’s eyes welled up with tears. “Oh  _ honey _ ,” she whispered, stretching across the table to pat his arm with a firm hand. “I am so sorry.”

Mac’s smile was sad but strong.

“I’m okay, really,” Mac said quickly, patting Linda’s hand before she removed it and leaned back. “It’s been hard but Jack’s really been there for me. I don’t think I’d be as okay as I am now without him.”

Linda gave a proud but watery smile to her son who coughed awkwardly. “So, this has been fun,” Jack pushed back from the table, “but Mac and I are gonna go up to Hood County and catch a show or something.”

As if a spell had been broken, benches and chairs began to scrape against the concrete and the four boys took off towards the small home near the back of the property that looked as if it had been converted out of a pre-built storage shed. Michelle’s yelling picked up again, the Spanish completely incoherent between the sounds of stacking plates and clanking utensils.

Kaitlyn and KK both gathered their things, Kaitlyn hefting a sleeping Cooper onto her hip and letting his head nestle on her shoulder and against her neck. She gripped Mac’s arm tightly and Jack smiled at how quickly his family had taken his boy under their proverbial wings. KK reached over to Mac and yanked him over until he was nearly bent in half to hug him tightly around the neck. After a few awkward seconds, Mac wrapped his arms around KK and hugged her back.

Jack’s heart was  _ melting _ .

KK whispered something in Mac’s ear that Jack couldn’t quite catch and the way that Mac’s expression grew determined hinted to Jack that it was probably about him. Mac gave KK one last squeeze before letting her go so she could give her grandson one last scolding. Jack took it in stride before KK engulfed him in a sweet hug.

“I love you, KK.”

“I love you too, Junior,” she said with a fond smile. “You take care of that boy, y’hear? He’s good. Don’t let him get away.”

And before Jack could question her instructions, she sauntered off with Kaitlyn back to their house next door.

Jack gaped after his grandmother and blatantly ignored the smug look his mother was sporting. He wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened but he was pretty sure he had just entered the Twilight Zone.

“Are you coming back tonight?” Jake asked. “Linda made up a spare room for you and Mac. If not, I guess we won’t see you for another five years?” Guilt gnawed at Jack, the accusation laced in Jake’s words like secret knives.

“I won’t let him skip out on you for that long again,” Mac said quickly, appearing at Jack’s shoulder like a ghost. “We’ll come back at least once a year from now on. That’s a promise.”

“I like you,” Michelle declared a smile. “We’re keeping you.” She turned to Jack. “You hear that Jack Dalton? If you two get divorced for any reason, we’re keeping Mac and you can take a hike.”

Jack scrunched his nose at the marriage analogy but Mac only laughed. “Look at that, I think they like me more than you now Jack.”

“Yeah, see?” Jack whined. “This is why I didn’t bring him home, I knew y’all would betray me for the smart aleck and I didn’t want to have to watch my own kin pick Mac over me.”

“Well, to be fair,” Mac teased, “you tend to pick me over you nearly as often even when I tell you not to.” 

It was a joke, in a lot of ways, but the heavier undertone pulled Jack down to earth for a long moment where he gave Mac a look he hoped convey the depth of his meaning when he replied, “And I always will.”

“Well you boys better get gone, or you’ll miss all the good showtimes,” Linda broke in. “And drive safe!”

Jack turned towards the house with a surreptitious glance back at Mac. “Yeah, will do Mama. I’m just gonna grab some stuff outta my go-bag real quick, hang tight,” he said to Mac who knew what Jack was getting. Both of their personal go-bags were equipped with a few necessities. Like Jack’s side-arm, extra burner phones, and of course - Mac’s Swiss Army Knife.

Mac casually made his way to the car, glancing in the bed of the work truck as he passed it. Linda was busy cleaning up the dishes and chatting with Michelle, and it looked like Jake wasn’t looking his direction, as he leaned over the edge of the bed and swiped a pair of old binoculars and a wheel of extra wire.

Mac hurriedly stuffed his contraband in the backseat before climbing in and checking his phone. He’d kept it in airplane mode for most of the day, and he wasn’t surprised to find texts from Bozer asking how he liked Texas and when he’d be back. Thornton had sent a message requesting an update on when he thought he would be field ready, and he quickly marked it as read, unwilling to come up with an answer in that moment.

Mac typed a quick but vague reply to Bozer about how Texas was hot and Jack’s family were all practically just like him, at least that he’d met so far, and that the food was so good Mac might eat until he burst.

By the time he had sent his message, Jack had climbed into the driver’s seat and the yard was vacant except for a barn cat lazily draped across the recently emptied table.

“Found these,” Mac said, tossing Jack the binoculars from the back. “Figured we could use them or I could modify them later.” Jack caught them and held them up to his face to check their magnification and how clear the image was. He grinned beneath the bulky black.

“Great. Oh hey,” he set down the binoculars and reached into his pocket before tossing something small and red to Mac. “Brought you a present.” Mac’s grandfather’s knife warmed his hand with the residual heat from Jack’s pocket.

“You know me so well,” Mac joked, pocketing the knife and pulling out another paperclip. He’d made a few for the boys at the table while they had sat and talked after dessert. He’d given Manuel one that was shaped like a water gun, to which the kid’s face had lit up in a grin. Isaias had gotten a horse head when he learned that Isaias was the one who wanted to train horses when he grew up.

The other two boys he’d learned were named Beto and Hector were too young for his paperclip creations, so he’d given Michelle two small paperclips, one twisted into a guitar and another into a trumpet, each designed to hang on a Christmas tree. 

“Yeah, well,” Jack drawled, “you’re sure easy to shop for. Duct tape and paperclips, and a Swiss Army Knife.”

Mac chuckled, twisting the paperclip as Jack pulled out of the driveway. He once again opened and closed the gate as Mac sat in the car. Mac wondered if he should have offered but he pushed the thought aside while he thought about what he knew about the neighbors.

Odd vehicles at all times of the night. Suspicion that the vehicles hadn’t stopped coming, merely kept their lights off. Odd figures on the road. Police patrols at least twice over the last few months stopping to speak to the property owners.

When Jack climbed back in and drove them in the opposite direction of the neighbors, Mac gave him a questioning look.

“I don’t need mama watching us drive in the wrong direction. She’ll know as soon as we turn that we’re not doing what we say we are. So instead, we’re gonna drive around the back way,” Jack grinned, passing where they had turned originally to head to town. Mac furrowed his brow.

“Okay? How do we get to the back way?”

“This street we live on was so annoying when I was a kid,” Jack started by way of explanation and Mac knew it was a good idea to let him start with the longwinded story because he was fairly certain Jack had some dramatic “Ta-da” moment planned. “New bus drivers never could figure it out and without fail if we had a new driver, I ended up back at the school waiting for my dad on the first two days. Pop started throwing fits and they started getting better, but safe to say they never could find this road.”

They turned around dead end corner to the left. “So anyway, it’s called County Road 313. Pretty fun number if you ask me, but there are actually two County Roads called 313. I know, weird right?” They took another left and Mac started to see the pattern but he figured he’d let Jack have his moment.

“Right so there’s 313 Spur, I don’t know why they call it a Spur, it doesn’t look like a spur, maybe like, the shank. But the part people think of, the rowel? Not what that street looks like. It’s just a street.

“Maybe if they’d just called it 313, before they renamed our 313 we wouldn’t have this problem. Sure they connect at a joint, but why shouldn’t they each get their own number, am I right?” They took another left. Mac felt a smile tugging at his lips. “So anyway, they made things confusing, the mail and bus drivers consistently got lost, until finally they renamed our County Road.”

Mac grinned, the humor almost too much. Jack was clearly self satisfied as he rounded the last corner and started down the last stretch of road. “Because really, what’s so hard about living on County Road 313 Loop?”

Mac couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled to his lips. He’d been laughing all night and it felt  _ good _ . And this was no different, Jack next to him in the driver’s seat like any other mission, cracking jokes and puns just to hear the sound of Mac’s laugh. Jack looked smug as he grinned like a maniac, killing the lights and the engine until he coasted the car right to the smallest gap in a pair of trees on the property line of the  _ neighbors _ .

“What are their names?” Mac asked softly, taking the binoculars from the back once again and looking through them to get a glance at the house. There was one light on and the flashing of a television through another window.

Jack shifted in his seat to get a better look through the windshield. “de Reza. At least, that’s what the mailbox says and what they told Jake after he had to chase down the dog that ran onto their property.”

“Hispanic?”

“Jake confirmed, it’s a pair of brothers, one of them has a wife, but he hasn’t seen hide or hair of her. Mama said she’s never seen her either, but she’s heard at least one female voice shouting from this property before,” Jack explained, gesturing for the binoculars. Mac passed them over and reached back to grab the spool of wire he’d snuck from Jake’s truck. He wasn’t sure what he could do with it now, but wire was always good in a pinch for a lot of things. He tugged at it. Good fencing wire, too.

“Did the cops ask about specific car models when they talked to your mom or Jake?”

“Not really, they were pretty vague, trying to keep everything on the down-low. And they were so unhelpful when I called about it,” Jack griped. “But there are at least two railroad containers behind the house, did you catch that?”

Mac nodded, then responded with a verbal affirmative when he realized Jack was still looking through the binoculars. “Yeah, I’m thinking if they’re a cartel they’ll at least have two more. They’d make great storage devices for stripping cars, storing and stocking weapons, and holding drugs - all without being seen from the road. And they’re not illegal in and of themselves, so there’s no probable cause.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Jack drawled softly. “Okay the light in the house went off. The television is still on but it looks like someone is leaving and heading to the containers out back.”

Mac checked his watch. 9:26 PM.

The two sat in silence, Mac watching the clock and Jack watching the property, the only sounds between them - the soft huff of their breaths and the gentle hum of the air conditioner. When the air grew stale Jack turned the air off and rolled the windows down slowly. The man who had left the house still hadn’t come back from the storage containers.

“How long has it been?” Time on stakeouts always seemed too fast or too slow. Mac had been watching the clock and he was surprised that it had only been thirty minutes.

“Half an hour, give or take. Is he still at the storage containers?” That seemed a little odd, unless they had been modified in some way. The giant metal boxes theoretically could (and had been) modified to become trailers. He’d seen families living in railroad storage containers after having cut out windows they closed up with cheap glass and window aircon units. A family of illegal immigrants could theoretically hide in plain sight on a family’s property if they were living in a unit run on a generator rather than tapping into the grid.

If you didn’t leave a trace on paper, no one would ever know you were there.

It took another half an hour but a pair of lights lit up the property and Mac and Jack quickly slunk into their seats, their eyes barely over the edges of the windows, Jack hiding the binoculars to prevent any kind of reflection or glare. A large truck, probably a foreign make judging by the cab-over style. Mac was fairly certain it was a truck he’d seen produced in China. Not safe and definitely not sold in the United States - but not illegal.

There was a large crate type extension on the bed, as if for livestock. Without their lights on, Mac couldn’t make out anything between the slats of wood, but for a second he thought he saw a reflection of light. His heart began to sink. They were taking something off the property tonight, he hoped they weren’t too late to stop whatever was going down.

When the truck, stealthily moving down the street with its lights off and quiet gasoline engine, was finally out of sight Mac sat back up.

“Jack, can you see any other movement on the property?” He asked, squinting. Now that it was darker and the light was off in the house, he could still see the signs of a television flashing in a room towards the back. But Mac had a feeling it was a distraction.

“No, I don’t see anything else. That doesn’t mean the other brother isn’t still hanging around. Why don’t we go ahead and pay him a visit?” Jack pulled his service weapon out and waved it softly and casually. “There’s two of us and one of him. I think we can take him.”

Mac grinned before reaching for his door. “How about you take him and I’ll be your backup. Wounded shoulder, remember?” He gestured to where he’d been shot. “I have a doctor’s note excusing me from hand-to-hand combat.”

“You’re just tryin’ to get out of helping,” Jack groused, reaching for his own door. They exited the vehicle carefully and quietly, shutting the doors with muffled thumps. The air was still and outside the car Mac could finally hear the gentle hum of crickets that had replaced the buzz of the cicadas during the day.

Their feet crunched on the grass and gravel mix on the shoulder at the edge of the fence. Mac felt his heart speed up as they reached the driveway. Jack checked quickly and nodded the all clear. It wasn’t great not having comms, but they’d worked enough silent missions in Afghanistan and even for DXS to know a variety of unique hand signals and head motions that only the two of them really understood.

Mac moved to the right, clinging to his SAK and wire, and watching the property with darting eyes.

They reached the edge of the mobile home trailer, hiding in the shadows and leaning against the warped plastic siding. The containers loomed to the back of the house, rusty red and clearly mistreated. They had begun to rust open and the metal was breaking down in places. They were scattered with holes that Mac wasn’t sure  _ weren’t _ bullet holes.

There were only three, unlike Mac’s initial assessment, but that only made their job easier. Mac rushed low to the ground towards the first that was held shut with a padlock that was clearly in much better condition than the box it was guarding. He grabbed a paperclip from his pocket and began to unfold it as Jack walked the perimeter of the box, checking for the other brother and possible hostiles.

Jack’s footsteps drifted off and Mac was left with the lock, the box, and the wavering moonlight as the moon drifted in and out from behind the clouds that earlier had been lovely accents on a blue canvas and now were obstacles to his goal.

“You got that open yet?” Jack hissed suddenly at Mac’s side once more. Mac jumped, his heart skyrocketing to his throat and he nearly fell over onto the rough and rocky gravel beneath him.

“Jack, what the hell?!” He hissed back, steadying himself. Jack looked nervous, and twitchy - and that was never a good sign. As far as instincts went, Jack Dalton had the best. Mac had learned a long time ago to trust that if Jack Dalton thought there was trouble, there was going to be trouble. (The only thing Jack didn’t seem to have was a bomb detector, but that was what Mac was for.)

“I dunno man, somethin’ about this don’t feel right,” Jack stressed, rocking on the balls of his feet, eyes watching carefully. “I swear there’s something off about this place. This doesn’t feel like cartel, man. There are no extra vehicles, no motorcycles, no chop shop, just three shipping crates and a shitty house. Does that sound like money to you?”

Mac paused, his hands stilling from their place on the lock and he glanced around. “No,” his brow furrowed. “No it doesn’t. And anything else can’t be good.”

“Exactly, man, now get that thing busted open so we can call Patty and get out of here!”

Mac took a deep breath and continued to reach for the tumblers in the lock. With a loud and satisfying click the padlock released and Mac quickly pulled it from its place. He stood and pulled on the door. When it creaked, he winced, before pulling as fast as he could to get past the noise before any possible hostiles in the house were made aware of their presence. He reached for his phone and turned on the built in flashlight and felt his stomach bottom out.

“Jack?” His voice shook. “I think we have a bigger problem.”

On the floor of the container, spread around haphazardly, were seven dirty and stained mattresses and blankets, all of them empty. Next to the closest lay a small object that Mac leaned down to inspect and his heart joined his stomach on the floor.

An American Girl doll, dirty, damaged and clearly used, was facedown next to a mattress, as if hastily abandoned.

Jack swore from behind him as he held the doll to the light. Mac couldn’t find the words to agree with Jack as his brain finally came to the conclusion he hadn’t wanted to see.

Linda’s neighbors weren’t drug traffickers, they were  _ human traffickers _ .

———

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,  _ shit _ ,” Jack hissed, staring at the evidence that his mother’s neighbors were human traffickers. Mac still had his light out on the doll but he was looking deeper into the empty container. All seven mattresses looked recently used and recently vacated. Jack remembered the truck that had driven off the property and he swore again.

“I gotta call Patty, we need to get that truck stopped ASAP, Mac,” he said quickly, reaching for his own phone. Mac didn’t stop him, moving around him towards the next container. Patty was on speed dial and she picked up on the second ring as Mac began to work on opening the second padlock.

“Dalton, this is a surprise,” Patty’s relatively unsurprised tone said over the line as she picked up. “I’m assuming this means there really is a problem with your mother’s neighbors.”

“Damn straight, Patty,” he growled, glancing again at the mattresses and clenching his fists. “Her damn neighbors are human traffickers, Patricia, and it looks like they just took an entire truckload of girls off the property tonight. At least seven, probably more.”

Patty was silent and then suddenly Jack heard the echoing and atmospheric sound that meant Patty had switched him to the War Room system. “Alright Jack, I’ve got you plugged into the system. We’re triangulating your location. I need you to give me a description of the truck.”

“White, cab over truck. Not a familiar make, looked kind of like a Hino maybe? Toyota? Something small and lightweight with a livestock fence on the back. Also it sounded quiet. Gasoline engine, or maybe a hybrid.”

“Got it, we’re going to start looking for trucks that match that description in the traffic lights going either direction from you,” Jack could hear the clicking noises of techs in the room typing furiously at their laptop computers, each of them working on one part of the entire equation to track down the girls that were on their way to somewhere much worse.

“I’m going to notify the US Marshall’s office in the next town over and they’ll be sending you a fully equipped SWAT team in the next hour. Can you make sure any of the other traffickers don’t leave the property before then?”

“I can do my best Patty, but it’s just me, Mac, and one gun without a spare mag.”

Patty sounded amused as she replied. “Well, I guess it’s a little less than a fair fight since you have Mac.”

Jack’s heart rose with the trust and faith Patty had just put in himself and Mac. They were her team. And looking at it from Patty’s perspective, Jack felt a little ashamed that he’d let his faith in his boy waver. He had Angus MacGyver on his side - the kid from the Sandbox with the funny hamburger name who had turned himself from a nuisance in Jack’s side into the one person Jack couldn’t live without in the space of 63 days.

He huffed a small and soft laugh. “Yeah you’re right, Patty. It’s not a fair fight. I’ll make sure we keep them here. I have to let you go now, Patty, Mac’s about to open the next container. If we have live hostages I’m going to need to help him with crowd control.”

“Understood, Dalton. I’ll be in touch.”

The line went dead and Jack stuffed the phone back into his pocket before approaching Mac from behind. The lock opened with a satisfying click and Mac hastily removed it, dropping it to the ground before rocketing to his feet. Jack could see the tension in his shoulders as he moved to open the door. This one didn’t make a sound as Mac shoved it aside, but the chorus of gasps inside did.

Mac’s flashlight hit ten pairs of open eyes that stared with wide eyed fear at the two figures in the doorway. Mac quickly crouched and readjusted the flashlight to illuminate himself instead. “Hey,” he whispered softly. “I’m here to rescue you, but I need your help.”

One girl, clearly the oldest in a group that had to range from as young as seven (Jack’s stomach roiled) to as old as seventeen, moved forward slowly on her knees. She looked at Mac calculating and seemed to see the honesty in his eyes. Jack was certain that the only faces they had seen since being kidnapped must have been the de Reza brothers, but it never hurt to be careful.

“I’m Lizzy. There are ten of us here,” she whispered back. “And I know there are fourteen in the box next to us. I heard them talking. They spoke Spanish but I’m bilingual.”

“Okay, Lizzy,” Mac said with a nod, “do you know how many were in the first box that they took away earlier tonight?”

Lizzy shook her head with the negative, her expression sad.

“Alright, that’s okay, that still helps us. Can you help me with something else? I need you to be in charge of the girls in here. We’re going to let you out and you need to gather everyone together on the side of the container, like you’re lining up for school.”

Lizzy nodded quickly, reaching down for the youngest girl’s hand. “Got it. Lines.”

“I’m going to open the second box and then we’re all going to quickly and quietly cross the street to the house across the way where you can hide until the Marshalls get here, okay?”

Jack watched Mac carefully instructing Lizzy and he knew that Mac was one of a kind. With careful consideration, Mac offered a hand to Lizzy and helped her to her feet. Jack could see that she wasn’t wearing shoes, but she walked outside onto the gravel with hardly a peep as she gathered the girls from the box like a mother hen pulling chickens under her wings. She lined them up carefully from youngest to oldest and the girls followed her with a natural ease.

Jack didn’t want to know how long they’d been in the box.

Mac watched until the girls were all standing silently in the darkest shadow of the container before he moved onto the last box. Jack followed, watching his back while simultaneously keeping an eye on the girls. Lizzy stood at the edge, also keeping watch. There was a small pool of liquid growing beneath her foot and Jack winced, but Lizzy kept her face solid and stoic as she guarded her little flock of lost girls.

Mac nearly had the last lock open when Jack heard the sound of footsteps just before a shovel smacked him across the shoulder, sending him flying.

Jack hit the gravel with an impressive thud and he felt the rocks lightly puncture his arm in places - nothing too serious, but he knew it would look terrible when he stood up and the blood began to flow. The girls let out impressively hushed screams. Jack figured they’d been trained by their captors to keep quiet out in the country like this.

This was probably the source of the female voice his mother had heard, not a wife that was clearly a cover story, but from a kidnapped girl fighting with the de Reza brothers.

Jack leapt back to his feet as Mac quickly blocked another swing from the de Reza in front of him, ducking the shovel and trying to turn his attacker around. de Reza stumbled from Mac’s shove, losing his grip on his handle and sending it flying. It crashed at the corner of the house with a clang.

Mac ducked a wide swing of de Reza’s fist and Jack was on de Reza’s back in an instant. The man was only two inches shorter than Jack, but it was enough leverage to get hold of the man’s arms and  _ squeeze _ . de Reza leaned forward trying to buck Jack from his back, but Jack wasn’t new at this rodeo. He rearranged his arms without losing his grip, his elbow finding its purchase under de Reza’s chin and one hand finding the other until he tightened his grip  _ just so _ and de Reza hit the ground like a sack of flour.

Mac had the lock off and was already explaining the situation to the second set of girls, whose leader was only fourteen. There were fourteen girls, the most of who seemed to be in their early teens. They listened to Mac and nodded, eyes wide and faces hard.

The second group filed out quickly and quietly, the smallest girl holding onto Mac’s hand and Mac nodded at Jack who nodded back. Mac would take the girls across the street to Linda’s house, explain as best as he could within reason, and Jack would clean up the property in time for SWAT to come in and take out whoever might be left.

There was no way this was a two man operation, Jack knew. The likelihood was it was six to seven men, all of the same height and general build, and all of the same or similar looking ethnicity to not draw attention - all posing as “The de Reza Brothers”. In a town like Rose Glen, no one would notice the change when they went places like the store or the bank, and in a neighborhood on the outskirts like the circle of large ranch properties on CR 313, no one would even think twice about extra men hanging out on the property.

Jack would even bet money on the loud music being a cover for nights that new girls were brought in.

He dragged the sack of unconscious flour that was the “de Reza” in question into the now empty container before dumping his body unceremoniously onto one of the filthy mattresses and walking back out. He shut the door and replaced the padlock quietly. He noticed that Mac had replaced the padlocks on the first two containers as well.

Smart kid. Jack couldn’t see the group from his position but he assumed they were making their way down the road towards the Ranch’s driveway by now and he picked his gun up from the ground and decided to make one last trip around the house.

He was halfway around the back when he heard the girls screaming again.

Jack was off like a rocket, sprinting towards the front of the house. By the time he arrived, the girls were all huddled together and Mac was looking a little worse for wear, his shirt and pants splattered with blood that Jack could immediately tell hadn’t come from him, and there were two men on the ground, and one tied up at Mac’s feet, unconscious.

The two on the ground were bleeding, unmoving and Jack had a bad feeling about it.

“Mac! You alright?!” Jack whisper-shouted, coming to a halt next to the bleeding men. Mac nodded, shoving his hair out of his face. It left a smudge of blood on his forehead and that one Jack could tell was coming from the cuts on Mac’s hands.

“What the hell happened? Did you take out these three guys all by yourself?” He checked their pulses and Mac shook his head.

“They’re dead. Madison here,” he gestured to a tired looking sixteen year old who was cradling her hand, “took out this one.” He nudged the tied up man with his foot. “The other two I got with the fencing wire.” He shrugged. “Who knew, right?”

Jack knew that Mac had known very well that he would kill the men with the wire, but was playing it off for the terrified girls behind him. Jack exhaled through his nose and scratched his cheek. “Alright, get the girls to Mama’s place, I’ll take this one to join his buddy in the box and I’ll leave the body cleanup to SWAT.” He looked at the time on his watch. “Twenty minute ETA for SWAT. Hopefully there are no other traffickers on site.”

“Got it. Meet you in twenty minutes?”

Jack nodded, reaching for Mac’s hand. Mac hesitated, glancing at his open bleeding wound, but Jack didn’t pull away. They clasped arms briefly and Jack knew he now had a nice bloody Mac-hand shaped print on his forearm but he didn’t want to let Mac go without knowing that he was worried and he was watching out for him.

“Stay safe, Jack,” Mac added as he started back towards the girls.

Jack nodded with a forced grin. “Always am.”

Mac smiled back weakly, before turning to his group of twenty four freed captives and ushering them towards hope and safety.

———

Mac was fairly certain that Linda Dalton was a saint.

He wasn’t even religious, but any woman who opened her door at one in the morning to a frantic knock and didn’t even blink twice at her son’s friend covered in blood on her doorstep had to be some sort of otherworldly being of goodness and light.

She’d caught sight of the twenty four shivering and cowering girls behind him and all she had done was take a deep breath before exhaling a long and exhausted, “Well,  _ shit. _ ”

She’d pulled on a pair of farm boots over her pajama pants and thrown a robe over her tank top, pulling it shut with the tie, before grabbing a walkie-talkie off the wall over the washing machine and clicking it on.

“Shit’s hit the fan, boy, get your ass outta bed,” she snapped into the speaker, then clipped it to her elastic waistband. She took one look at the girls and sighed. “I can’t fit everyone in the house but I’ve got space in the barn. So the neighbors really were up to some serious crime after all.”

Before Mac could answer, Jake came tearing out of his house at the back of the property, just at the edge of the fence where Mac could see a pasture of cows beyond. He was dressed in his boxers, a t-shirt, and a carhartt jacket - all on top of a pair of farm boots like Linda, and he was sprinting like the devil was on his heels.

He skidded to a halt and got his first real look at the group of girls who balked at his energetic arrival.

“Holy  _ shit _ the neighbors really were up to something.”

“Yeah,” Mac said awkwardly, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, “guess you guys have pretty good instincts after all.”

“What are we gonna do with them?” Jake asked, looking at Linda for instruction. Linda tilted her head to the barn, lit only by a single light over the door. He nodded and headed to his truck the he started quickly.

“Most of y’all are gonna have to walk, okay?” Linda addressed the gaggle of girls softly. “But the few of you that I can see need help are gonna climb up into the back of the truck with me and Mac here and we’ll get you in the barn and start working on fixing you up.”

From there it was fairly simple to load up the girls who were clearly swaying on their feet with fever, or bleeding, or weak from dehydration. Lizzy was surprisingly the one who put up the most fuss, refusing to even climb in until she was certain every other girl who couldn’t walk any farther were in the bed of the truck.

“Come on Lizzy,” Mac coaxed gently. “You need to ride, we need to get a better look at what’s happened to your feet.”

“Not until everyone else is safe,” she said, chin raised firmly in defiance. “I’m fine, I’m the oldest and I have to make sure they’re safe.”

Eventually she caved when she saw the space the girls had made for her in the bed and she allowed Mac to gently lift her by her waist into the truck bed. He hopped up after her and so did Linda, and they perched on the tailgate, legs swinging with the bouncing of the truck as Jake drove them over the rough pasture terrain towards the barn.

Jake killed the engine once he had pulled inside the door and he hopped out of the cab to shut the barn doors behind them. Once the doors were secure, he felt his way along the wall in the darkness until he found the switch to the lights.

“Lights coming on,” he called softly in warning before the barn was suddenly illuminated by a soft golden light. Mac thought the barn was rather picturesque. He could imagine Jack bringing home a date to take up to the loft that was covered in what looked like piles of straw and hay - the perfect spot for making out and not getting caught.

Mac paused in his train of thought, his heart lurching to a halt.  _ Wait,  _ he thought to himself.  _ Why does it matter to me if Jack brought a girl to the barn? _ The answer was clear that it shouldn’t, but even as he helped unload the girls onto the clean and dry cement barn floor, he couldn’t puzzle out why the thought made his stomach twist itself into knots and pull funny backflips.

Lizzy was the last one in the bed but Mac held up a hand as she tried to scoot towards the tailgate. “Let’s get a look at your feet, Lizzy,” he said gesturing for her to bring her feet forwards. Linda brought out a massive first aid kit that had probably been built with horses in mind but had plenty of items Mac could use to start cleaning and closing the open wounds on Lizzy’s feet.

_ Speaking of horses,  _ Mac’s brain thought with a smile as three heads appeared in open stall windows. Linda and Jake quickly went over to check on the horses but there wasn’t a problem at all with the horses or the girls. In fact, the horses seemed more enthralled with their visitors and the girls calmed down immensely as they reached up to pet the horses velvet noses.

Mac watched Linda and Jake introduce each horse to the girls - Stormstar, Jumper, and Hershey - and they capitalized on the distraction to begin disinfecting and bandaging different cuts and scrapes on the girls who were cooing over the horses that seemed equally happy to give the girls attention.

The sound of SWAT vehicles reached Mac’s ears and he felt his shoulders relax as he continued to work on Lizzy’s feet. He’d gotten most of the shrapnel and debris from the largest cuts but it was down to disinfectant to do the rest and he was once again surprised as she didn’t make a sound when the stinging liquid touched her injuries.

She was biting her lip and seemed to be struggling to take her mind off of the pain as Mac continued his work, so he started talking softly to try and take her mind off of what his hands were doing.

His blue gloved fingers worked nimbly over her feet as he told her about how he met Jack, the day he’d been punched in the face by a grown man who was over sensitive about his stuff. She’d laughed a little at his description of Jack ‘throwing a tantrum’ about Mac messing with his gear. He’d told her about the IED fight (minus the four dead terrorists Jack had killed, but still included their reconciliation over the comms). She had gasped and for a moment Mac worried that he’d hurt her enough to break her stoic silence, but she was staring at him in wonder.

He told her about the day they were recruited to DXS, Patricia Thornton showing up on the dry and dusty base in a rich black pencil-skirt suit, still looking like she could kick your ass, four inch heels or not. That had caught Lizzy’s attention and Mac smiled at the mental image of Lizzy in place of Patricia Thornton - ready to kick ass and take names.

He was about to tell the story of the mission in Madagascar, when the barn doors opened and SWAT appeared along with four ambulance crews. Jack sauntered in behind the rushing paramedics, looking like an old western hero at the climax of the story.

“Alright then, Maverick,” Mac teased as Jack strode up looking no worse for wear. “I think you can turn the charm off.”

Jack tilted his head and squinted at Mac. “Maverick?” He sounded skeptical. “Y’know I always saw myself as more of a  _ Sheriff Dillon _ type.”

“How about Wyatt Earp?” Mac smirked back, referencing the middle name he’d finally learned upon their arrival.

Jack gave a soft little smirk, scrunching up his nose. “If I’m Wyatt Earp that makes you Doc Holliday,  _ huckleberry _ .” It was meant to be a joke, but Mac felt as if a bolt of lightning had gone through his heart and the world was suddenly new.

_ Yeah, I’m your huckleberry _ , he thought back to Jack, the words refusing to leave his lips.  _ I’ll be your Doc Holliday for as long as you’re willing to keep me around _ .

Angus MacGyver felt his worldview shift as the cogs in his heart fell into place and he realized one very important fact about himself.  _ Angus MacGyver is in love with his partner _ , he thought softly.  _ I guess stranger things have happened. _

Jack was hauled off to a corner of the barn by his mother and Mac watched Jack struggle to explain everything with little to no disclosure of the classified nature of their work. He caught sight of Jack mouthing “CIA” and his mother deflated. They’d clearly heard the “That’s classified” speech before, and as much as Linda wanted to know the truth she let her son off the hook.

Jake climbed into the bed in the spot Lizzy had recently vacated with the help of a paramedic and a stretcher, and he gestured to Mac’s still gloved hands. “You gonna have someone look at those? Cause if you don’t want to go to the hospital for it, I can probably give you some decent first aid.”

“It’s okay, Jake, I’ll fix him right up, you go get some sleep,” Jack reappeared as if by magic and Mac’s heart skipped a beat. Damn, he was going to have to get a handle on that if he wanted to make it back to DXS in one piece. Jack winked at Jake who rolled his eyes before hopping back down.

“Whatever you say, Junior,” Jake sighed. “Just don’t get yourself killed, okay? And bring Mac back next time, and make sure he’s in one piece.”

“Always,” Jack replied with a full smile. When Jake was out of sight he turned back to Mac who took a deep breath, his nose filling with the scent of Jack, dirt, and sweat. Jack took hold of one of Mac’s hands despite his protests and he peeled the glove back.

“Damn, Mac, you did a number on yourself.”

“Yeah, well that’s what I get for using fencing wire like garroting wire,” Mac shrugged halfheartedly. “I knew it would be a problem but I couldn’t come up with anything faster and they had  _ guns _ and there are twenty-four girls, Jack, I couldn’t just...”

Jack sighed heavily through his nostrils. “Hey,  _ hey _ , it’s okay. I know, I would have done the same thing. You did right by those girls, Mac. You know, I know it, and they know it.” He picked up the cleaning supplies Mac had previously abandoned and began to apply the peroxide. “It probably wouldn’t help to say ‘this might sting’ would it?”

The liquid running over his palms stung hard and fierce and Mac hissed out a string of impressive profanities to the amusement of Jack. Using his other hand to grip Jack’s shirt he leaned his forehead against Jack and clenched his eyes shut.

“It’s alright, Mac, I gotcha,” Jack rumbled softly. Mac could feel Jack’s hands working against the deep cuts in his palms, and with his eyes closed he could feel practically every point where their hands touched. It was comforting, even through the pain, to feel how gentle Jack was with every motion.

After cleaning and bandaging both of Mac’s hands, Jack collapsed onto the tailgate with Mac and watched SWAT, the Marshalls, and the ambulances begin to trail off of Linda’s property. The sun was slowly changing the sky from black to a silky grey on the very edge and the sleep Mac had missed was finally catching up to him.

“I’d love to say we can crash in Mama’s spare room, but our return flight was booked by Patty as soon as I called her. We’re out from Dallas in four hours, so we need to leave here pretty soon,” Jack sighed. “You look like you’ve been hit by a train.”

“Feel like it too,” Mac grunted, his head wobbling dangerously before he gave up and rested it against Jack’s shoulder. Jack’s comforting presence wrapped him up and held him close, continuing to sooth away the hurt Mac hadn’t even known he’d been soothing. His shoulder didn’t hurt anymore and he had no idea where he’d even left his sling.

And best of all, the hole in his heart was finally starting to close. He was ready to move on from Nikki and let her go.

“So after we sleep for like twelve hours,” Jack continued, his voice a comforting rumble against Mac’s ear that was pressed to his shoulder, “what are your plans?”

“I dunno,” Mac yawned. “Go for a jog probably? Might go up into the hills, try and get back into shape. Bozer’s working but when he gets off his shift we might start building a model missile he wants to use in a future movie.”

“I bet it’ll be the most technically accurate model missile ever done in an independent film,” Jack teased. Mac smiled against Jack’s shoulder. They sat and enjoyed the silence of the morning, basking in the breaking light. In this moment, nothing else mattered and nothing else was real. Tomorrow Mac would have to learn to adapt to a new life - a life where he knew that deep down he loved Jack Dalton, but Jack Dalton would never love him.

But for now, they were in Texas, beneath a rising sun, and nothing else mattered. Before he could forget, Mac reached into his pocket and pulled out the last paperclip creation he’d made while he had walked the girls down the long stretch of road and driveway to Linda’s backdoor.

“This is for you,” he said softly, sitting up and pressing the paperclip into Jack’s hand. Jack glanced at him confused, his fingers closing around Mac’s. Mac didn’t let him pull away before he finished what he wanted to say. “Thank you, Jack. For bringing me here. I know the human traffickers weren’t part of the plan, but aside from that I had a really great day. You introduced me to your family, you let me into your past, and that means a lot to me.”

“You’re family, Mac,” Jack protested weakly, but Mac shook his head.

“We didn’t always get along, but I just want you to know that there’s no other partner I’d rather have than you. So thanks, Jack. For being there for me.” And Mac drew his hand away.

In Jack’s palm lay a tiny paperclip bent and twisted every which way until it was flat and curved softly into the shape of a place that was near and dear now to both of their hearts - a tiny silhouette of Texas.

Jack was speechless for a long moment before he looked at Mac with tears in his eyes. “Thanks Mac.”

“Yeah man,” Mac said, clearing his throat. He nudged Jack with his shoulder in a repeat of the gesture Jack had done at dinner. “So, you gonna cry on me or what?” It was teasing, an out for Jack to find a new topic if he wanted to avoid sentimentality or intimacy.

Jack laughed. “Nah, Deltas don’t cry, dawg.”

“You sure? Cause I heard from Linda that you cried at every flu shot for nearly fifteen years.”

Jack shoved him hard and he rocked to the side, laughing. He glanced at Mac’s bloody and ruined clothes and looked at Mac chagrined. “So…wanna call an Uber?”

Mac burst into laughter, feeling lighter than he had in two months, maybe even longer. He had Jack by his side, smiling and cracking jokes, and he watched Jack secret the tiny Texas paperclip into his shirt pocket before he cracked another joke, sending Mac into an ever longer spiral of laughter until Mac was clutching his sides once more.

_ Yeah, _ Mac thought with a grin as he hopped from the truck bed.  _ With Jack Dalton around, things were always going to be okay. _

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler Alert: KK isn't nicknamed KK because she's "Killer Katherine", it's because her husband used to call her KitKat.
> 
> I have an entire family tree for Jack Dalton Jr. This fic was influenced and based around my own hometown in Texas. If this sounds familiar to you, you might be from Rose Glen. There are a few real places mentioned in conjunction with a few of my own. Thank you all so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed meeting the Dalton's!
> 
> Spanish Translations:
> 
> mijo - my son  
> ¿Qué te dije? ¿Qué dije acerca de usar tus juguetes al lado de la casa? ¡Mira lo que has hecho! Tienes que disculparte con el señor ahora, hijo mio - What did I tell you? What did I say about using your toys next to the house? Look at what you've done! You need to apologize to the Mr now, son.  
> Ve, no lastimes a tus hermanos. - Go, don't hurt your brothers.  
> Ay ¡Por favor! - In this instance its more like "Oh no....", could be "oh please" or "oh bother", some sort of exasperated exclamation.
> 
> COME TALK TO ME ABOUT MACGYVER ON [TUMBLR](https://lavendersblues.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
